BARBARA OAKLEY: Censorship Hurts Our Brains—Literally. Neuroscience confirms the importance of free speech to individual citizens—and to democracy itself. “People point to social media as the trigger, but the narrowing of perspective often starts much earlier—in classrooms. The glee some teachers expressed after the killing revealed how easily bias can masquerade as neutrality. Studies find educators lean heavily to one side politically, yet many sincerely believe they’re impartial—the “bias blind spot” in action. From primary school through college, dissent is rare and pressure runs mostly one way, etching patterns that are hard to undo. China has long understood this: It now pulls Tibetan children into state-run schools from the age 4, stripping away language and culture so Communist Party ideology can fix identity before anything else can take root.”